Be Still and Know...

Looking to Jesus... The author and finisher of our faith... Is not about being good. It's not about doing a better knowledge of good. 

Looking to Jesus is about being present in this moment. 

I will not claim to know what tomorrow holds. I will not begin to claim something about tomorrow that I don't know for sure. I won't even name and claim some positive outcome that I want... Tomorrow May in fact be darker than today... And I'm okay with that now.

I know that whatever comes, even the dark stuff, especially the dark stuff, Jesus will walk it through with me.

That's all I really need to know. 

So if big scary stuff is happening I just slow down leaning a little harder listen a little more surrender a little more fight a little less...

I listen so that I can be proactive instead of reactive...

I listen so that I can take advantage of opportunities that he points out in the middle of the dark stuff...

If I keep myself centered on him and the storm rages but I have peace.

I'm a Widower...

At day one, I told myself the only "why" that mattered is that in a broken world things break. 

That carried me through the why seasons.

At almost two years now... Here's where I've come so far:

In this World you will have trouble. 

Not might. Will. It's a promise from God. 

You. Will. Have. Trouble.

Fear not. I have overcome the World. 

I will see her again. She's in my future. She won't be my wife, that ended here. She's my Sister in Christ. Which she was before our marriage, during, and always will be. That title is more important than the title of wife. It's an eternal title. 

Which also means that how I treat my other Sister's In Christ here matters. They'll be my Sister's for eternity. I must honor them. I'm still learning how to do that one. I've failed more than succeeded. But I'm growing and learning.

There's coming a day when everything here will be a distant memory. It will have been overcome. Some overcoming happens even now. There's a "yes" but "not yet" to God's promises. Some we see here, some we won't see the ultimate fulfillment of until we get there.

He doesn't walk us around the valley of the shadow of death.... He walks us through it. 

When he says he prepares a banquet table in the presence of our enemies... I've come to see that as him using our darkest valleys as the place of preparing us for our greatest points of ministry. 

I don't feel a specific calling to widows, for example. But I do sit with people in hard stuff, widows included, in ways I couldn't before.

I've faced the hardest stuff of my life since she died. But instead of running to distractions, like I used to, I lean in to the hard stuff now, let it change me, and I keep leveling up each time I do.

I leveled up this past week a bit. It hurt. But it felt good too. 

So I'm going to practice being still again. I let this busy season take me out of that habit. I'm going to do it again. Come back to the stillness of my chair and let Good speak.

#Selah